Snall

Grian

Grian's design is loosely based off of those angel tree toppers you get. My typical headcanon is that when Grian became a watcher he had a bunch of body horror stuff done to him including removing all his facial features excluding his eyes, and becoming a lot more doll-like than human, with a porcelain face and all that. With this transformation, he also gained a pair of white wings on his back and another where his ears used to be to appear more angelic, as the watchers wish themselves to appear. However, when he started playing again instead of just watching, he dyed his wings so that they were coloured like a parrot's, to distance himself from the horrors, kinda like if you dyed your hair after a particularly bad breakup and then keep redying it because it's actually a good look on you. For Nice Life, the dye is gone, leaving his wings white like snow with a halo always above his head. He isn't specifically any particular species because of his time with the watchers, but the closest thing to a player species he'd be (Watcher is not a valid player species) would be a type of golem. Golems in my headcanons being player-made constructs that gain sentience in some way. A bonus tidbit for this one is that the way I drew his halo is the same way I draw the sun (at least in relations to winners' celestial bodies) but just with a hole in the middle. I think this design is my favourite of this batch of art.

Ren

Ah, Ren the Red King. The whole Red Winter thing at the finale was both highly unexpected and incredibly hype. For Nice Life, Ren is a a human-husky hybrid, with huskies being a wintery dog and from what I've seen mainly coming in brown and black. On his green and yellow lives he is a brown husky as it matches his in-game hair colour, but on red when he becomes drained of colour he becomes a black (kinda grey, really) husky. His teeth become sharp and his smile a little wider, and he now wields an axe. It isn't exactly the peppermint axe I drew Joel with last time, but it couldn't be the axe of the Blood-Crowned King without a little red already on it. While I'm not entirely happy with the legs because I didn't want them to just be straight up and down as they aren't humanoid legs, I still really like this one. It also took a lot longer than the others as I had to do a whole nother outfit instead of just recolouring a pre-existing one. This is the first time that I've drawn Ren and been happy with the result, because I am determined to give him long hair but don't know how to mkae it look normal. This Ren had short hair because it's a special and they're all meant to look a little different than normal. However, it did not take as long as the next one however, which you are about to see why!

Scar

For all the hours upon hours I've watched of this series, Scar is only one of two perspectives that I've watched all the way through (the other being Scott's). I'd watched eight POVs all the way through up to Simple Life, but only continued with Scott as Past and Nice Life came out and didn't with anyone else, then I started Scar's and watched it all the way through. What I originally wanted to do was make Scar a "sugar plum fairy" whatever that is, but most of what I found in reference images made me reconsider, because as much as I would love to saw fuck gender roles, I didn't want to put Scar in a tutu because that wouldn't really fit the whole eternal winter thing. I guess Bdubs in a shirt and jeans didn't really either, but I'm sure he'll be fine enough with all that moss on him. So instead of modifying his species I just gave him another ribbon. He's sort of meant to be a present, but that doesn't really come off too clearly. I really didn't want to change his sweaters, so he has a ribbon around his head and a ribbon around his waist. His species (which has not changed) is a fairy, because I think that really fits his character (striking deals and not breaking the promise he made of not killing those with a friend pass by making someone else kill them instead) and it gives more variety. One thing to note is that I don't typically draw him with eyelashes or eye shinies, but here he's trying to look all cute and innocent and is putting on his best puppy dog face. It tooke me over three hours to draw this guy because his sweater is so complicated, and then he's got a second sweater that is entirely different to the other swearer which is just as difficult to draw. He's also got a candy cane cane (a candy cane, if you will).

Impulse

Impy here is still a demon, his design is just inspired by a fireplace. It's mostly seen in the brick patterns on his sleeves and wings, but also his colouration which is vaguely brick-like. One detail I want to point out is the shape of his tail, instead of being a classic point, is shaped like a firs poker. I also didn't give him any of the jewelry I usually give him (which is kind of an accident but I'll pretend it isn't and that I'm not typing this out) to match with Skizz, who is also missing at least one earring. I gave him a cup of hot chocolate so that he could be cozy, and also because it's a thing that you snuggle up next to a fireplace with it's great and amazing and all that. In general, I really like the way this design came out. He looks so cuddly.

Scott... Again!

Scott, but with more up-to-date hair, flipped 180 degrees and a little more humanoid. He is based off of an aurora, which come in a great variety of colours and are rainbow, like his brand. The pose is the same except he's flipped around because otherwise his eye would be covered by his hair and he'd look blind, which he ain't. Well, at least not in both eyes. As I said in my last post, I headcanon Scott as a shapeshifter and therefore he takes a new shape for every season (except he's a unicorn hybrid in both April Fools specials, but that's a same tpe of special exclusive). Originally, he was a peary caribou hybrid, but then I decided that was stupid and made him an aurora celestial, but then I kinda realised that auroras aren't really celestial objects or events, but rather a collision of particles that create light in the Earth's upper atmosphere (don't quote me on that) and so he became an aurora nymph. As nymphs in my lore are personifactions of nature split into four categories (plants/plant-like organisms, water, earth and air) he is a subsection of air nymph. I just think it's what fits best. This is also the only drawing that has smudged lines because I thought it would look better than just a bunch of random squiggles to represent an aurora. I think it turned out pretty well and it was the better call to make. I do like him more than my original version of Scott, even if I don't think I capture the joy and whimsy as well in this one.

Scott

My favourite guy of the group so obviously the first I drew. As I headcanon him as a shapeshifter, I make him shift shapes for every season and special, so here he is a peary caribou hybrid. I should of just done a reindeer, but nope, I wanted that for Gem (even though I didn't get around to her) and decided to make him a caribou, which is closely related but still. He's got his coat and scarf from his Nice LIfe skin and teh old hairstyle I drew him with before deciding to simplify it. A decision I made was for every weapon and tool from this special to be at least something Christmas-adjacent, so he has a diamond candy cane sword. His scarf, eyes and hair changed between images.

Joel

I typically make him either human or a human-wasp hybrid, so for Nice Life I decided to keep him a bug. Specifically, he is a Christmas beetle, which is a species native to Australia that only come out around Christmas time and can be quite noisy. I was originally going to make his hat change colour with his life, but decided not to for some reason. If I were to go back and re-do this I'd probably do that and make him a bit more visablly buggy, like adding visible wings instead of just antenna and a barely visible bit of green on his forehead. I'm also not a big fan of the pose, but its fine. His axe is a peppermint swirl with two bites taken out of it by someone with a really big mouth. Probably Bdbubs or something, I dunno.

Martyn

Martyn is the one I am most proud of for this. He looks cheeky, he's silly and this was the first time I drew him with any kind of beard. Normal Martyn I make a spruce tree nymph with his headband being tree bark and the loose hanging bits being twigs, but here he is a mistletoe nymph. Specifically European mistletoe which is white because of his British-ness. In general I like my design of Martyn but I like this version of him a lot more. I can imagine a gag of him pulling the mistletoe leaves from him headband and making someone come to their door before holding it above them and asking for a kiss. It would not be good for his health but it would certainly be fun. My biggest complaint about this one is that the only thing that changes between lives is the star on his shirt. Like, come on past-me, at least make his eyes red on his third life! You would have thought I'd gotten the memo by then.

Skizz

Skizz is a snow angel, which was way to perfect. On his Christmas skin he's got snow on his shoulder and hair, and with people most often drawing him as an angel or some form of avian (myself included) it fit way too perfectly. This is my second favourite piece here with the whimsy being strong here. The feathers on his wings are a bit dishevelled because they're meant to be a bit icy compared to normal wings. The hardest part was interpretting the actual miecraft skin into an outfit because I wans't quite sure what I was looking at, but it still turned out great. One thing to point out is that I don't usually draw him with a halo, but instead a metal band around his arm as a nod to it, but I did here because of those angel Christmas tree toppers of angels with a halo connected through a stick coming out of their heads. It just felt a little more Christmassy and the band would otherwise be covered by him wearing sleeves, so I went with it.

Jimmy

I redrew Jimmy last month because my species headcanon of him changed from pond nymph (I was still very into Empires 1, still kinda am) to just a human-canary hybrid. Here, he is a partridge in a pear tree, because though he is not the first out he can still be the first in some other way. The pose is the exact same as the original was, but the way I drew it this time looks way better. I definitely like the colours I picked for this and am fairly happy with how it came out.

Bdubs

Bdubs is a moss nymph, as I always draw him, he has just covered himself in Christmas ornaments. I'm not as happy with this as I am with some of the others because of how simple it seems, but i still ike it better than the first two (sorry past-me but I know you'd agree). The biggest things to mention are the shading of the star on his head, considering I've done no shading thus-far but I really like drawing shiny things and making up where the light and dark go. I never have a clue if it makes sense, but I ike the look of it so I keep doing it. The other is the ornament on the left side of his chest, which may or may not resemble a clock that is getting closer to the 12th hour with each death. He's just a little guy, as you can tell by how little space he takes up in the image compared to everybody else.

For this last one, this is my first time drawing them all together in one place (even if it's just their faces) so many of their designs aren't solidly in place and some of them have entirely different designs to when I last drew them.

1) Jimmy and Ren are two idiots whose first loyalties are to each other. Jimmy mostly just tagged along with Ren after they found each other and as such if more of a follower. Ren is still dramatic and a bit inappropriate which Jimmy will sometimes bounce off of and other times scream "PG!", but I think they'd get along well.

Tango and Joel are all about being the last players left. They're all in when one of them suggests doing something that could worsen everybody else's lives and get a bit silly about it (Joel's plan to make a lilypad monopoly, Tango's Dare to Flare game (Joel thinks they should rig it)). They also really want to burn stuff down together, which they get the chance to later.

Grian, Martyn and Big B do their own thing a lot of the time, but I like to think they'd have a goal to complete each session that they'd scheme in their dark oak tower. Initially, Grian would have wanted to be on good terms with everyone, but Grian and Martyn are known pranksters (see: 3rd Life session 1) and Big B knows how to keep a bit running (see: Secret Life) so they'd do things to annoy the other teams that would eventually escalate into something deadly. Just like in canon, but a bit later on.

For the big group (Cleo, Bdubs, Impulse, Scar and Etho), Impulse, Scar and Etho are all floaters. Impulse is trying to make the others his "secret girlfriends" and is friendly with every group like in canon. Scar has a separate, smaller base in the desert to "protect" it but still pops in quite often to see how everybody's doing. Etho goes between staying in the village and staying in the castle until eventually staying full-time in the castle. Cleo and Bdubs are basically a married couple, like in canon, and Cleo is the main voice of reason in the whole group. One thing is that Scar still burned Etho's dark oak tree in session one so there is some tension between them as Scar teases them about it and burning down the other dark oak forest when the group learna about it. Cleo has to get between them to act as the mediator, Impulse tries to talk Etho down when he's around and Bdubs likes to rile them up when Cleo isn't around to cause some drama. They have fun.

Skizz's strongest alliance is with Ren's faction like canon and he acts as a close confidant to both Ren and Jimmy.

Scott's strongest alliance, at least near the beginning, is with Joel and Tango. They don't get along swimmingly, but because of Scott showing them the dark oak forest and them living in the same biome, they don't antagonise each other and work together when they need to.

2) At the start, yes. It does snowball later on like it did in canon and there are a few rivalries, even within teams (see: Scar and Etho).

3) I wouldn't think so. Scar might, but people wouldn't be as incentivised to get a good reputation with him because he loses his lives a bit later on, so it would just another thing that doesn't catch on.

4) Pretty much all monopolies are doomed to fail in the life series. When Ren digs down into the cave to meet Jimmy, he does it from the other dark oak forest biome, and Scott still lives right next to it. Scar is still delusional about making sand a scarce resource and failing to convince his teammates to dig it with him. Joel decides to get every lilypad, then every dead bush when that fails, but neither work. In that aspect, not much has changed.

5) It's no SoliBeanSmajorWood: The Fantástico (because that was probably Martyn's idea and he's one of the guys trying to make the monopoly) but once Scott gets told by Joel and Tango they go to the other dark oak forest and Scott starts handing out saplings, including to Martyn who tries to get him in on it and asking where Scott got them, but Scott refuses to say (he's told everybody else who's asked). Every base includes some amount of dark oak to spite the failed monopoly.

6) In terms of first death, I'd say session 2 Bdubs for the same reason in canon (hit off a pillar by a phantom) because no one dies in session 1 as far as I've made out. The order might change but it's the first death that would stay the same, because Bdubs still wants to build a castle without a safety net. If you're talking about first elimination, that is something I have planned out and it is a very different context to canon, but you'll just have to wait and see for that ;)

7) What I've mentioned is basically all the starting groups, and it doesn't shift around too much. The earliest alliance would probably be Joel and Tango, considering they meet up pretty soon after the start of the game. The early game isn't as different because it takes time for the small differences to fully develop, and the session one stuff is at the start.

The biggest changes in the early game are the teams (if Scott and Jimmy don't meet theres no Flower Husbands, if Martyn doesn't become Ren's advertiser there's no Dogwarts etc.). In this au, there are four main groups and two loners.

First of all we've got Jimmy and Ren who meet in a cave and decide they should stick together, at least for now. They continue mining, go to a few different caves to find diamonds and decide to set up a business together for people to come get enchanted, with both of them reaping the rewards. The name of this business? Why, it's-(engagement farming, please let me yap about this)!

Next is Joel and Tango, who work together to get shields and dogs and decide to stick together because there's safety in numbers (and Tango doesn't want to build a house, he's a redstoner, not a builder). They set up on the yet-to-be-named Dead Bush Hill and become dog breeders, because there's safety in numbers (their number will increse quickly).

Martyn, Grian and Big B are the first three to get diamonds, and Martyn decides to use them to make each of them a diamond sword. They go their seperate ways but eventually meet back up and decide to tear down the dark oak forest in the top corner of the map to 1) make a monopoly and 2) have cool wood to make their base out of.

Cleo, Bdubs and Impulse make a base and go mining, finding Scar underground and sharing diamonds between themselves. They make a base by the water and eventually make their way to the village with Etho to become the Village People before abandoning that idea and making a castle (with all aforementioned players).

The two loners are Skizz (like canon) and Scott, who still makes it to the flower valley and decides to set up there, becoming biome neighbours with Joel and Tango.

So the main thing here is all the blood. Before Tango failed boogey in Past Life and got his variety of cartoony deaths that get more disturbing the more you think about them, Scott was the only person to have ended a session as boogey without killing anyone, so I took some creative liberties of how I thought Scott lost his life without dying, and why everyone else was so desperate to get a kill, even on their allies (Big B and Bdubs). My conclusion was that the nearer to the end of the session you got, the more pain you started to feel, and the only way to relieve the pain would be to inflict it upon somebody else. What this pain would be was the person's insides slowly breaking down and causing blood to leak out (e.g. capillaries in the eyes bursting).

When Tango's goofyfication happened, this kinda threw my whole thing out the window, until I considered the withering affect. I never really thought too hard about what wither would do to a player's body, but what is wither if not decay? And so, for Scott's "death" in Last Life, his insides withered, causing blood to leak out of various orifices and causing him a slow and painful death (which is also why there are little bits of black in the blood). But. Scott didn't exactly die. He lost his yellow life, but he did not drop dead and respawn back in bed. So, the next step of this is that he didn't really die even though he lost a life, and since he didn't technically die, the wither affect didn't completely go away and he is still bleeding on red. This is where the potion comes in. It's supposed to be regen to combat the effects of the wither, at least enough to stop him from constantly taking damage. Scott's always the potion guy anyway, he loves them.

The minorest of minor things is that I made his skin slightly paler than how I'd usually have it to show his little bit of blood loss, but that doesn't matter considering this is the first piece of art I'm posting of him.

If you're wondering about the frame, it's mostly random but a few things are meant to represent berry bushes because he lived in a taiga and there are crescents surrounding the stars at the top and bottom to semi-represent Pearl.

The only other thing to mention is that here he is depicted as a celestial, so he's got patches of skin that reflect the night sky. More specifically, I headcanon Scott as a shapeshifter so his species and appearance differs for each season, but for Last Life he is is a celestial. Probalby because he teamed with Pearlescent Moon, who I headcanon as a celestial-moth hybrid.

Also also, for the star covering the eye thing, I imagine that only happens after the failed boogey. Maybe his right eye was a lot more damaged by the wither effect or the watchers just didn't want him to see as much because they were being petty. Or maybe he felt guilty that he had to leave his teammates behind after sacrificing himself for them so he wanted to hide his face in shame. Doesn't matter too much, I just like drawing it that way.